Every now and then I watch a film and wonder how on earth the writer (in this case Matthew Kennedy) could ever come up with the story... This is undoubtedly one of those films! Lily Collins is "Lauren", a high-flying Assistant District Attorney whose wealthy father dies of an heart attack. He leaves the bulk of his fortune to his wife (Connie Nielsen) and cute Congressman son (Chace Crawford) but she receives a surprisingly derisory sum and a mysterious key. When she goes to investigate, nothing can prepare her for what she will find; nor for the consequences of this, frankly preposterous, discovery. For any mystery to be successful, it must have some anchor in plausibility, and boy does this not. The supposedly intelligent, savvy, daughter makes such a surprising series of choices - risky, naive and downright stupid at times - that her character is compromised from way too early on to make this much more than a muddle of a film with Simon Pegg as an extremely unlikely, and unconvincing, protagonist. Worth a watch on a dark, wet, winter's night I suppose - but aim low.
**A new meaning for the expression “having skeletons in the closet”.**
In fact, this film seems to be determined to give new meaning to the famous popular expression “having skeletons in the closet”. I can't say it's a totally bad movie, because there's a lot of much worse and very popular crap floating around. The film is a good attempt at a thriller film with a lot of mystery, and that manages to entertain us satisfactorily. No, that doesn't make it a good movie. It's just decent.
The script begins with the sudden death of a very rich banker, patriarch of the Monroe family, a family well inserted in the white and wealthy Anglo-Saxon elite that governs everything and everyone in the USA, solidly founded on its “Ivy League” degrees, on the Skull & Bones, on the power of Wall Street and high finance. After the reading of the will and the (quite unequal) distribution of the inheritance, the eldest daughter of the deceased, Lauren, who is in the attorney general's office in Manhattan, discovers that her father had a dark secret: an isolated bunker on the family property where a man has been held for thirty years. But this man knows the family's darkest secrets.
I have to admit that the script works on good premises. What is the politically and economically influential family that has no hidden secrets and seeks to maintain a good public image? However, there are really questions of logic that fail a lot: how is it possible for a man to be imprisoned for thirty years without becoming severely ill, losing bone and muscle mass, losing the ability to digest food? It's absurd. And the protagonist's marriage seems just a facade, as she is almost never seen with her husband and daughter. The ending is also excessively sudden and does not satisfy us. It is quite obvious that a smart lawyer would have gone to great lengths and sought out more information before taking any action regarding this imprisoned man.
Simon Pegg is excellent in the role of the imprisoned man. Despite the character being treated in a rather careless and illogical way by the script, the actor did a very good job and tried to adapt as much as possible to the character he had ahead of him. I also liked Lily Collins, but the actress is too young for her character, she looks like a young graduate, or an intern, and not an important prosecutor. She doesn't even seem to have the experience for it!
Technically, the film is quite restrained. There are no great visual or special effects, everything takes place in well-selected settings and environments, and the costumes don't bring any surprises, and neither the cinematography. The film's environment, however, is worked out in the right way, and manages to gradually thicken as the characters act.
